A large crowd walks down Telegraph Avenue to protest against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley, in Berkeley, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. Because of the protest the event was canceled. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)

BERKELEY — Calls to march in support for President Donald Trump on Saturday are meeting with mixed enthusiasm locally, partly the apparent result of the recent widespread repudiation of alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos by erstwhile fans.

A Feb. 8 Breitbart News article headlined “Exclusive — The Spirit of America: Conservative grassroots leaders plan massive pro-Trump demonstrations nationwide” linked to the website of Main Street Patriots, which lists more than 50 rallies scheduled for Saturday. The list includes Brea, Palmdale, San Diego, Simi Valley and Ventura in California.

Another organization, March 4 Trump, announced on its website more than two dozen rallies scheduled for Saturday across the country, including Berkeley. The “March on Berkeley” is supposed to begin at 2 p.m at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park.

“If you want to defend your liberty and your rights, then march with us on Berkeley,” Kathy Zhu, also known by the handle @PoliticalKathy, said in a video posted on Twitter on Feb. 17

In the video, Zhu casts the march as a response to the forced cancellation of a scheduled Feb. 1 event on the UC Berkeley campus. The event, a speaking engagement by former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, was canceled by authorities after a group of about 100 to 150 masked people threw rocks, broke windows and set fires outside the student union building during an otherwise peaceful protest. Zhu describes the shutdown as a “direct assault on our First Amendment rights.”

But days after Zhu’s post, Yiannopoulos lost status in the eyes of many of his followers after comments resurfaced that he had made more than a year earlier apparently endorsing sex with adolescent boys.

Inquiries to the UC Berkeley College Republicans, which sponsored the Feb. 1 Yiannopoulos event, were not immediately answered.

As of Monday, no one had filed for a permit for Saturday with Berkeley authorities, according to city spokesman Matthai Chakko.

Peter Boykin, a North Carolina-based organizer of March 4 Trump, said last week, “I don’t think Berkeley’s going to have a march per se. They’ve been kind of added in.”

Boykin confirmed there would be an event in Berkeley on Saturday. He did not provide specifics about what it would be but gave some hypothetical examples: “You can march for Trump from one sidewalk to the other,” or, “you could organize a flash mob” or, “just show up and yell, ‘Yeah, Trump!’ and get out.”

Another March 4 Trump organizer, Rich Black, said “I can confirm there will be a peaceful assembly” in Berkeley at the time and place given on his organization’s website. As far as other details, Black said, “Because of, essentially, the way Berkeley works for those of us who are conservative, nothing’s been made public.”

He added, “It must be underlined: This is a peaceful gathering in the name of free speech.”

On Feb. 22, the organization Its Going Down, on its website, called on “antifascists, anarchists and anti-authoritarians everywhere to resist what is sure to be an open display of racism and misogyny” on March 4. “In Berkeley, the events are specifically being organized by members of the Alt-Right, connected to groups like the ‘Proud Boys,’ ” it added.

Tom Lochner covers Berkeley and occasionally West Contra Costa County for the Bay Area News Group. Tom grew up in Western Europe. He was a translator for a patent law firm and an international bank in Manhattan, then a housing manager in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, before moving to California to become a journalist.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said there was nothing wrong with the officials expressing “private political views via private text messages.” Strzok, in particular, “did not say anything about Donald Trump that the majority of Americans weren’t also thinking at the same time,” he said.

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